Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

I watched two UMC services today. In both, they had one singer do a song during that part of the service and didn't mention offerings.

 

'God has called us to be in a world without God.'

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Listened to Beethoven's Missa Solemnis Tuesday. Also watched Escape at Dannamora. The prison at Dannamora has a church named after St. Dismas, The Good Thief inside the grounds (pictured below). The church was made out of stone pieces of the original prison structure which dates to 1844. Who was St. Dismas? He was one of the two others crucified with Jesus, one on his right and one on his left. Dismas was the one who sought forgiveness and believed in Jesus while the other one wanted Jesus to "save himself" in order to prove his claim of being the son of God. Oddly, enough Dismas was also featured in a magazine excerpt I was reading today. (Technically, Dismas was the "first" saint dying subsequently to Jesus, though others were beatified long before him). The other odd thing? I'm reading about the Gospel of Mark also today (hey, I got time) and one of the passages mentions when apostles James and John (the "Sons of Thunder") ask Jesus for the honor of being "on his right and left" to boost their own status. Jesus said - "You don't know what you're asking."
PS - Former famous inmates at Dannemora include Tupac Shakur, Ol Dirty Bastard, Lucky Luciano, former Beat poet Robert Corso and a dozen or so "inspirations" for various Law and Order episodes.

 

Well, damn. You just had to make things dusty.

The situations were very different and I wasn't saying a prayer, but I did something very similar the morning my mother died. She was in the hospital in Pittsburgh and I was flying back there that morning, but it became clear she wasn't going to live long enough for me to get there. She was non-responsive at that point, but I had my brother put his sell phone to her ear so I could talk to her. What I didn't realize is I was on speaker phone. He told me a couple of the nurses overheard and were crying.

Of course, my brother was a lying jackass, so he could have made that last part up.

 

sorry

 

Condolences, @outofplace

 

Thank you. I probably should mention she died over three years ago, but damn, that phone call came back when I read that post.

Nothing to apologize for, Azrael. Thank you for sharing that story.

 

You can get used to losing a parent, but I'm not sure you ever completely get over it. May her memory be a blessing.

 

That is why my heart goes out to the doctor and the son of the 100-year-old woman in Azrael's post. Just basing it on the mother's age, I imagine the son is a good bit older than I am. Hell, he's probably older than my mother was when she died. (She was 69.) That is the element that is easy to get lost in all the statistics with COVID-19. So many people are losing people loved, and in many cases, they can't mourn the way they would prefer.

My mother's funeral was important to me, especially giving her eulogy. The same is true of the unveiling ceremony we held after her headstone was in place. There were complications with all that, mostly due to my older brother being a disaster. We couldn't even do it until this past fall, not long after my brother died. I held it together during her funeral, mostly because that's how she was when things got bad, but that probably wasn't a good thing. At one point during the unveiling, I just broke. I'm not even sure what finally set me off. I tell this story because I will never forget how my wife and daughter wrapped themselves around me in that moment. I'm not sure I have the words to explain what that meant to me.

The memory just makes me hate that so many people can't even grieve properly right now. I believe you are right. It's not something we fully get over, but grieving is such an important part of moving on. Most of us do have to endure the loss of our parents. Doing right by my parents when they died was incredibly important to me and it saddens me that others are being denied that opportunity now.